This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7119 from an application entitled Swap Bay Device Supporting Both Master and Slave Mode and Portable Computer Having the Same earlier filed in the Korean Industrial Property Office on Aug. 30, 1999, and there duly assigned Serial No. 36312/1999 by that Office.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable computer and, more particularly, to a portable computer having a swap bay device and a swap bay for mounting it.
2. Description of the Art
As an interface for peripheral devices such as a hard disk drive and a CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read-Only Memory) drive, an integration drive electronics (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cIDExe2x80x9d) interface has been applied to a computer that is compatible with an IBM PC. The IDE interface supports two independent channels with each channel being able to support one master drive and one slave drive. Therefore, maximally, four IDE devices can be mounted upon a computer system. In a desktop computer, IDE devices of a conventional IDE interface type have jumper pins for setting feasiblely whether the devices are operated in a master or slave mode. Appropriately setting coupling relation of the jumper pins, a user makes the IDE device to be operated in either the master or slave mode.
A portable computer may adopt an IDE interface having two channels, like desktop computers. However, a portable computer may generally have only one or two IDE devices, for example, a hard disk and/or a CD-ROM drive because it does not have enough space for peripheral devices. In a portable computer, a hard disk drive is connected to a primary channel and a CD-ROM drive is connected to a secondary channel and each one of such IDE devices is set to operate in a master mode. This is because, if two IDE devices having different performance are connected to one channel, performance of one IDE device having relatively higher performance is lowered to be equal to that of the other having relatively lower performance.
Usually, a hard disk drive is built in such a portable computer, and a CD-ROM drive is built therein or is swappably provided thereto. A region for mounting swappable IDE devices in a portable computer is called a swap bay, and devices mounted upon the swap bay are called swap bay devices. In most portable computers, a swap bay is generally shared by a floppy disk drive and a CD-ROM drive.
As mentioned above, because IDE devices for a portable computer are operated in a master mode, IDE devices designed only for portable computers are set to be operated in the master mode and do not have additional means for selectively setting the master/slave mode.
Developers of a chipset for use in a portable computer have strived for making the chipset have more improved performance, efficient power consumption, and a smaller size. An example of such chipsets is a 440MX chipset from Intel Corporation. The 440MX chipset includes an IDE controller supporting one IDE interface channel. This is because only one IDE interface channel is sufficient for a portable computer using a maximum of two IDE devices. In such a portable computer, two IDE devices are set differently, with one IDE device set to a master mode and the other to a slave mode. For example, the hard disk drive is set to the master mode and the CD-ROM drive to the slave mode.
In a portable computer supporting two IDE interface channels, an IDE device provided to a swap bay device is set to a master mode and a procedure or device for changing the setting is not provided thereto. Thus, a swap bay device having the ability to set to a slave mode should be supplied to be suitable for a portable computer with one IDE interface channel. The portable computers supporting one IDE interface channel and two IDE interface channels are provided to cause the problem that each intrinsic swap bay device should be fabricated in isolation. Although CD-ROM drives are identically provided to a swap bay device for a portable computer, it is necessary that one is for a portable computer having an IDE interface supporting one channel and the other is for a portable computer having an IDE interface supporting two channels. That is, master/slave mode setting thereof is different. Therefore, portable computer manufacturers have to manufacture swap bay devices that are different from each other. This causes a burden of inefficiency in inventory management.
Exemplars of the art are U.S. Pat. No. 5,581,716 issued to Park for IDE type CD-ROM drive Interfacing Circuit, U.S. Pat. No. 6,016,518 issued to Matsushima et al. for Automatic Master/Slave Designation for Computer Peripherals, U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,794 issued to Yoon et al. for Computer System Capable of Selective Booting from Two Hard DiskDrives, U.S. Pat. No. 5,649,233 issued to Chen for Apparatus for Flexibly Selecting Primary and Secondary Connectors and Master and Slave Cascaded Disk Drives of an IDE Interface, U.S. Pat. No. 6,044,423 issued to Seo et al. for Identification of a Swappable Device in a Portable Computer, U.S. Pat. No. 6,024,607 issued to Wahl for Female Combination Connector, U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,624 issued to Chan et al. for Real-time Hardware Master/Slave Re-initialization. I have noticed that none of the art shows a simple and inexpensive way to make an IDE device compatible with both a single and dual channel IDE interface.
Therefore, it is an object of the invention to provide a single swap bay device that can be applied to both a portable computer having one IDE interface channel and a portable computer having two, respectively.
It is another object to have a single peripheral device that can communicate with multiple types of computer interfaces.
It is yet another object to have a swap bay device in a portable computer that has a method of changing the interface channels.
It is still yet another object to have a swap bay device that can be manufactured with a single design and yet interface with multiple types of interface cards.
According to one aspect of the invention, a swap bay device having a master/slave mode has a housing that is appropriately mounted upon a swap bay of a portable computer. The housing has a device unit, a connector, and a mode selection switch. The device unit includes swap bay device function circuits. The connector is installed on a lateral of the housing so that it is connected to a connector installed in a portable computer. The mode selection switch is installed on the lateral thereof, and sets the swap bay device to the master or slave mode.
In one embodiment, the swap bay device is an IDE device. If the portable computer supports one IDE interface channel, the IDE device is set to a slave mode. If the portable computer supports two, the IDE device is set to a master mode.
According to another aspect of the invention, a portable computer having a master/slave mode has a swap bay device having a mode selection switch for setting the master/slave mode. The mode selection switch is installed on a lateral of a housing of the swap bay device. A swap bay is made in a body housing of a portable computer, and receives the swap bay device. The swap bay has a means for switching the mode selection switch. The switching means is located at one position corresponding to a location where the mode selection switch is installed on the swap bay device. If the swap bay device is received in the swap bay, the mode selection switch is switched by the switching means.
In another embodiment, the swap bay device is an IDE device. If the portable computer supports one IDE interface channel, the swap bay device is set to a slave mode. If the portable computer supports two, the swap bay device is set to a master mode.